About Eldakka

Eldakka’s Comments

freeze the competitor out of the market with lower prices and superior marketing

In itself is not an anti-trust violation. For it to be an anti-trust violation you'd have to be accomplishing those ends via illegal means, e.g. false advertising, illegal tie-in contracts/cartels (e.g. Apple and it's attempt to corner the e-book market), and so on.

If you can make the same product cheaper because you have better manufacturing, then it is not an anti-trust violation to sell it cheaper, still making a profit, even to the point of forcing your competitor out of business.

And that's what I take to be the point of the article, that using a patent you are not entitled to (patent infringement) is not an anti-trust violation, because the source of the information for your product isn't a component of anti-trust violations.

I think you meant Sauron. With his all-seeing eye (NSA), his armies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Nazgul (CIA) poking their noses in and destabilising his foreign opponents and chasing down his enemies, kidnapping them and returning them to him for torture.

Assuming the warrant is upheld, it should give immunity to the FBI agents from US-based legal consequences.

However, a US-based warrant is not valid in other countries.

Therefore we have a group of people who are known to have distributed child pornography in 120 foreign countries/territories for 10(?) days. We (or at least the courts/FBI if the actual agents names who were involved has been kept confidential) know who they are. They have admitted in court filings to have distributed child pornography. Therefore there is no question of fact as to who has distributed child pornography to those 120 countries for that period.

Surely the authorities of those countries should be issuing arrest warrants, international arrest warrants, for those FBI agents/staff who conducted this operation?

I mean, the Swedish authorities issued an international arrest warrant for questioning on suspicion of rape (Asange), but here we know for a fact of people distributing child pornography to 120 countries, over 8000 IP addresses, for 10 days?

I am not condoning the actions of the ATF, however there is a world of difference.

The legal and moral arguments behind making the distribution of even known, decades old images of child porn is that even tho the act of making the porn has passed, therefore the initial crime has been done, there is continuing harm to the victim even after that initial act. There is continuing emotional distress to the victim of having the porn distributed. It's mere existence is a harm to the victim. And each time it is distributed or re-distributed, another harm is inflicted on the victim.

However, selling guns only creates a victim if the guns are actually used. Same with drugs. The product can be sold/given to the targets, then re-claimed later in a raid of some sort, and as long as the product hasn't been further distributed or used (the drugs are still there, the weapons are still there and haven't been used etc.), then there has been no harm created.

So the drugs/guns only potentially creates victims, however there is a chance to re-claim it without creating any victims. But with child porn this cannot be said, distributing it creates or further harms the victims.

And there's a Supreme Court ruling that makes this abundantly clear. 150 years ago, in the ruling on Ex Parte Garland, the Supreme Court stated:
The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.

Although a static IP aids data aggregation, the main tracking technologies for advertisers are based on being able to uniquely identify your computer and/or browser and associate it with a login or other information you've given to other sites. The methods include traditional cookies, flash cookies and other persistent identifiers, all of which pass right through a VPN and also allow the VPN IP to be associated with the target.

There are many technologies that are used for tracking. IP's being one of them. They are all used because if, for example, you delete all your cookies, but they have your IP on record from when you had their cookies, when we re-connect with the same IP but no cookies, they can deduce that you are that person because you are using the same IP .

It's the combination of information that they use. IPs, cookies, logins, tracking 'gifs', browser user-agent strings, what software you have installed on your computer (yes, some browser scripts can pull information directly from your computer, check out ThreatMetrix), hardware serial numbers, and more. They collect it all, so if a few elements go missing from your next session, say cookies deleted, or IP changed, or using a different username, they can use the remaining info that you haven't changed to fill in the gaps and still know who you are.

And also note, that in many ways the biggest threat to general online tracking is your own ISP. Look what the various ISP's have tried - putting unique identifiers on all your outbound packets, and so on. A VPN (as long as they are independent and not in cahoots with your ISP) will strip that (if it's at TCP/IP level) from your packets so the destination won't have that tracking information.

This is a blog, not a news site. I expect a lot more personal opinions, emotion, and a more conversational style on a blog site. In a conversation, people drop the occasional 'light' curse word, damn, shit, bugger, bloody hell, bullshit. Well, everyone except maybe the Queen. And, depending on the audience (e.g. not in a conversation with my mum), and how passionate one feels about the topic, the odd f-bomb or other stronger curses may be used.

If I want the dry, sanitized news, I'll go to a news site with their army of editors. Style editors, newsworthiness editors, fact checkers, topic-specific editors (sports, entertainment, et al.), editors-in-chief. All answering to corporate masters (CIOs, Boards, owners of the conglomerates that owns the company that owns the news site).

Not only is that comment misleading but it's also self serving, coming from Mike Masnick. First, Techdirt directly benefits financially.

You really need to pickup your level of reading comprehension from kindergarten to at least high-school level.

For example, if you include the sentence directly following what you quoted:

That's why we have this ongoing partnership with Private Internet Access, the popular and excellent VPN service that helps stop companies from tracking you so carefully. And that's why we'll do things like make money off of affiliate fees from helping protect your privacy, instead of selling out any good will and trust by treating you "as the product" (as the slightly ridiculous saying goes).

From that second sentence, they are acknowledging that they take a kickback ('affiliate fees') from referring purchasers to PIA.

And further down in the article, again an acknowledgement that they make money from PIA and their own Insider Shop:

And, again, picking up your Private Internet Access VPN from us is one great way to support Techdirt (and help you protect your privacy). You can also buy stuff from our Deals Store or support us directly via our Insider Shop.